The American comedy writer Dick Vosburgh wrote A Saint She Ain’t with the British composer Denis King. Yet another satire on Hollywood, it targets the silly forties movies and treats us to caricatures of W. C. Fields, Mae West, Jimmy Durante, Rita Hayworth, Dick Powell, Abbott & Costello, etc. These unsacred cows have been milked too many times to yield much that is potable, let alone palatable, however skilled the hands working the udders.
King’s melodies are pleasant, but Vosburgh the book-writer does not scale new heights of zaniness. He is, though, a funny fellow, as witness zingers such as “By the single blue eye of Veronica Lake!” or “Time is short, like Alan Ladd.” A generally able cast does well by the material, which gets rather overwhelmed by the Apollo Theatre. Off Broadway, it could fill a modest stage and, with luck, even the seats.